The player guides a group of people settling in a newly discovered archipelago of islands.

The player must provide miscellaneous goods (including food, lumber and tools[2]) and public services for the settlers' welfare.

When supplied adequately, the population will grow and the inhabitants will rise to higher social classes.

Development currently focuses on implementing more gameplay content (buildings, resource production lines).

[4] Unknown Horizons took part at the Google Summer of Code 2011 as a mentoring organization[7][8] and participated again in 2012.

[14] Despite its alpha state, Unknown Horizons already appeared in issue 24/09 of the German c't computer magazine, as a part of the Heise software collection 6/09.